Peer Production Search Engine

The other day Yahoo! Launched My Web 2.0 , it's integrating personal and social search. It may be very early in its development, but it offers very interesting search features already.

The Yahoo! Search Blog writes: "It is a new kind of search engine - a social search engine - that complements web search by enabling users to search the knowledge and expertise of their friends and community in addition to the web"

Imagine that you are planning a trip over the weekend to Rome. With My Web 2.0 you can save your best search results and write a tag, a short description, about the webpage. Then invite your travelling buddies, to ad their own personal search results. By combining your search efforts, you get a great overview what you and your friends like to see and do, when in Rome.

The Yahoo blog continues: "Over time, we envision communities using My Web to build their own search engines to capture and make accessible the knowledge of their community - search engines populated with the collective experience of a group of medical researchers, a community of PHP experts, a bird watching club, or members of a structural engineering consulting firm."

Chris Sherman from Search Engine Watch has written an interesting article where he explains My Web 2.0. He points out some of the issues he sees with tags being used to help improve the relevance of search.

Overall he is positive. "Despite its rough edges, My Web 2.0 is an innovative, thoughtful approach to personalized and community-based search. Many of the new features are genuine steps toward the creation of the semantic web , the next generation "intelligent" web envisioned by web creator Tim Berners-Lee." Chris writes.

If you'd like to learn more about My Web 2.0 you can find the My Web blog here.

Personally I look forward to invite some of my friends to build up an expertise search engine for marketers. Look out for the invitation in your e-mail!

We Will All Be Media Moguls

John Batelle writes that Google will introduce a digital video player from its video search beta site. The concept is that anyone can upload video to Google, tag it with category keywords so that others can search for it.

Battelle thinks that the digital video player "will be integrated with the Google payment program which was revealed to be in process last week. Plenty of folks uploaded video to Google with a payment option, and that has yet to roll out, but you can expect that it will. . . . this will help the spread of an alternative universe for video distribution and playback, one independent of the walled garden business model in which video is currently locked."

Most European markets are closing down their analogue TV-broadcasts these days. Digital technology is cheaper and offers better quality. In most of these markets, the TV broadcasts are under heavy regulation and political influence. This Google service could sidestep most current market players and let small broadcasters start their own TV-business.

The search engine will transform into the TV-remote control. When you find what you would like to see, you pay per view. Or you view something that is sponsored from the Google advertisers, for free.

If you think this is far fetched, think again. It's happening today!

Re-Mixed Editorials - Maybe Later?

On June 12th, LA Times promoted an interesting idea. The chance for readers to re-mix their editorials. "Watch next week for the introduction of "wikitorials" - an online feature that will empower you to rewrite Los Angeles Times editorials.

This initiative was met with some scepticism.

I think this is a pretty cool idea. It would have given a lot of initiated people the tools to think, argue and make the debate go from the first editorial, to some form of group opinion, depending on how much you empower the readers.

This experiment in its first form was how ever short lived. It's been put off-line, for the moment.

LA Times explains "Unfortunately, we have had to remove this feature, at least temporarily, because a few readers were flooding the site with inappropriate material.

Thanks and apologies to the thousands of people who logged on in the right spirit."

Let's hope this concept will be re-designed and put to good use in some other form by LA Times and others. "Peer Production", is if the noise level is dealt with, an idea whose time has come.

Peer Production - The Power Of Us

In one of my earlier blog postings I wrote:
"We are going from mass media to media from the masses. Blogs, Vlogs and Podcasting give anyone the possibility to reach out and influence others."

Media is not the only industry that the Internet is transforming. Business Week's Robert Hof excellent article "Power of us", takes a look at how the net are revolutionizing the many industries, by the contribution from virtual communities.

"Open-source software, blogs, file-sharing networks, free Internet telephony -- are disrupting multibillion-dollar industries and reshaping the businesses. What's the common thread behind them all? Us."

He also writes about other examples of networked contribution, like how Procter & Gambles is using a network with 80 000 independent "solvers", who tackle research problems for P&G's clients.

What makes this happen is of course the Net, it can connect many people with many others at the same time. Cheap computing, software standards, open platforms and faster Internet connectivity are also important factors when trying to understand - "the emergence of an economy of the people, by the people, for the people.".

And you should try to understand how Peer Production can be used, or will be used in changing your industry.

"Only the paranoid survive" as Intel's Andrew Grove put it.

Search Marketing Works For B-to-B

Research firm Millward Brown has recently completed a study on behalf of Google It's not officially published, but the findings have been published by Information Week.

"The study shows that in the research phase, buyers turned to search 30% more frequently than trade publications, the next most popular source of information.

During the final purchase phase, buyers used search 62% more often than trade publications. Across the various phases of IT purchasing, from research to comparison to buying, search ranked second as a source of information, behind manufacturer Web sites."

Even if the report was financed from Google, a spokesperson from JupiterResearch tells the reporter that the report is matching their own findings.

This can't be any surprise to anyone?

The Trade publication is a periodical. Old issues are not easy to get, when you need them. Yellow pages might have the contact details and the map, but will not give you any product information or company background.

By using search and the company web page the buyer saves time and at the same time gets a good market overview.

My conclusion is that B-to-B search advertising is not only here to stay, it is also likely to grow in importance to most B-to-B advertisers.

When reading this, please note that I work within the search marketing industry.

Internet Ad Spending Growth!

IAB estimates that US Ad spending on the Internet totalled more than $2.8 billion for the first quarter of 2005. Ad Age reports that "The first-quarter spending figure represents a 26% increase from the $2.2 billion spent during the same period last year, and it spiked 4.3% from the fourth-quarter 2004 figure of $2.7 billion."

In Sweden IRM reports for the SE market where the total Ad spending was up 5,3 percent for the first quarter of 2005. Search marketing was the big winner with 50% increase from the same period last year.

Great start for 2005 Ad spending on the Internet!

Podcasts Remix MoMa

The New York Times writes about a homemade audio guide for the Museum of Modern Art, MoMa. It's done by a Professor and his students, and is downloadable as a Podcast from their website.

They describe it as a way of "remix MoMa". By doing this they offer art-lovers an alternative way of experiencing the museum with a blend of irony and pop-music.

Being an art lover, I can really see the use for this.

First, It's to often the speaker voices are boring and don't bring anything to the exhibition. Second, coming from a Sweden it's rare to have any local language audio guides when travelling. With podcasting you could get the audio guides translated into different languages, downloadable from the Internet.

Blogs, podcasting and vblogs are still in its early days, but it amazes me how creative people are. Let A Thousand Flowers Bloom.